Professor E Jeffrey Hill has led a study to be published in the June 2010 issue of Journal of Family Psychology under the name “Finding an Extra Day or Two.”  In the study, the researchers conclude that telecommuters can work an average of 57 hours per week without feeling the conflict with family life as compared to 38 hours for office bound employees. The study also concludes that the happiest and hardest working telecommuters also had flexible work hours and did spend time in the office.

Besides saving money for the company, telecommuting has been associated with increased job satisfaction and boosting morale, when it may be suffering.  However, telecommuting alone does not create a happy, effective and hard working employee.  Here are 10 tips for being a responsible, efficient, productive and successful telecommuter:

1.  Hyper communicate!  People do not realize that you are working if they can not see you.  When practical, hyper communicate so that you are perceived as being busy and effective.  Send e-mails and follow-ups during the day as well as odd and late hours.

2.  Keep your family members out of your office and train your children to knock.  You will stay better focused and will not have embarrassing interruptions during phone calls.

3.  Experiment with your attire to see which is more productive for you.  Try wearing business attire.  Does this keep you from taking on home projects when you should be working?  Does it turn on a psychological switch that says you are ready to work?  Try wearing relaxed clothes to see whether comfort keeps you focused.

4.  Take advantage of your neighborhood and go for walks during breaks.  Drink plenty of water and do not get drunk on the job!

5.  Plan breaks throughout the day.  Alternate between fun breaks and productive breaks.  Productive breaks can include folding laundry and emptying the dishwasher.  Use a timer during the breaks so you know when it is time to get back to work.

6.  Use a timer for your tasks as well.  Race the timer to get each job done.  It is difficult to get distracted during a race.

7.  Do not facebook or IM your friends.  And if you have found your way outside, apply plenty of sunscreen.

8.  Organize your tasks the night before each work day.  Know the most productive items on your list and start on them first thing in the morning.  If they are long or complicated tasks that will take days or weeks to accomplish, work on them for a certain amount of time each day.  This will break the task down to smaller pieces and avoid procrastination.

9.  Keep healthy foods and veggies on hand for snacks.  Do not let your vicinity to your kitchen allow you to get overweight.

10.  Be disciplined on the time that you have picked to end your day.  Have your work space set-up in an office and stay out of there when you are not at work.  Leave nothing in your office that will need during personal time and make sure your home PC is better than your work PC.

As a final note, your office tools are critical to an effective work environment.  Place your computer, computer screens and Internet modem on a battery backup unit so you can keep working during a power outage.  Your should be connected to your office for voice and data communications.  Hosted PBX services from Hosted VoIP providers can seamlessly connect you to your office phone system.  WAN services such as LogMeIn can handle your data needs.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Hosted PBX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.